Page 10 of Ideal Life

Talia collapsed backward into her chair.

She had literally just saved a life.

And yet, she was still mortified that it had come to this. If Gabe Marques had died, it would have been Ideal Life’s fault, which might as well have been Talia’s own personal fault, as far as she was concerned. The startup might look like a company to outsiders, but to Talia, it was an extension of herself. She had dropped out of grad school before finishing her dissertation, lost touch with friends, and put every drop of her heart and soul into this desire to help people live better lives. So yeah, any failure of Ideal Life was a direct failure of Talia.

Had she done enough here in the past to ensure that harm like it wouldn’t happen again?

Talia wanted to talk to the engineering team, but unfortunately, that would have to wait until regular office hours.

Unless she could simply turn the watch hands forward to 9 a.m.?

She touched her fingers to the crown.

But then she moved them away. She didn’t want to risk it going forward, since she wasn’t entirely sure yet how this thing worked. If she was wrong and something else happened… like time zoomed to the original starting point and erased what she’d just done, and she couldn’t rewind again because it was a one-time wish.

It occurred to Talia that since she was here redoing Thursday, she might as well call the French attorneys to light a fire under them and make sure they sent over that missing document. Even though it was the wee hours of the night here in California, it was already the workday in France. And if Talia got that final French appendix before the lawyers here began their day, then Omni would be able to sign the acquisition documents on time, before the celebration party.

Oof, this mini rewound timeline was getting tricky to keep track of. To make sure she didn’t screw it up, Talia wrote down the key times:

Thursday a.m. (French time): Get missing document.

Thursday a.m. (Pacific time): OmnisZcience and Ideal Life finalize and sign acquisition documents.

Thursday p.m.: Rebecca Lawrence does not kill Gabriel Marques.

Thursday p.m.: Celebration at Sugiyama restaurant downstairs.

Having confirmed Thursday, take two, Talia turned on the translation function on her Omni 3Ds. Then she called Jean-Marc Dubois, the partner of the French law firm, from her computer. He picked up on the third ring; he was also wearing Omni 3Ds.

“Good morning, Talia. How are you?” (In reality, he’d probably said something like, “Bonjour, Talia. Comment ça va?” but the glasses converted it in real time to English for her.)

“Hello, Jean-Marc,” Talia said. “Apologies for bothering you, as I know that my attorneys have been pestering you as well, but we really need that technology-transfer preapproval letter today. It’s the only thing we’re missing for the appendices of the acquisition documents.”

“Yes, yes, of course; don’t worry—it will arrive.”

But Talia knew for a fact that it would not. At least, not if Jean-Marc just waited in his office. She had already been through this part of the day before.

“I must respectfully disagree,” Talia said. “However, Ideal Life will pay extra to send one of your junior attorneys down to the government office to physically retrieve the document from them. We must have it by the end of your workday. Everything else is set for Omni to sign the acquisition agreement today.”

“Hmm, I do not know if we have anyone to spare—”

“Please, Jean-Marc. I’ll send you a bottle of your favorite wine.”

“Are you stereotyping me?” But he laughed. “Fine, fine, I will get one of our young attorneys to go down to the office. But don’t send me French wine. Send me a bottle from Sonoma Valley. That’s near you, isn’t it?”

“You got it. Thank you, Jean-Marc.”

That hopefully taken care of, Talia hung up. There was still plenty of time before she had to head into the office, so she took a long, hot shower, washing away the disaster of last night (which technically hadn’t happened yet, but it still felt good to soap the memory away).

Then she brewed a huge pot of coffee and set to work making a list of all the things she wanted her engineering team to look at in order to head off problems with Ideal Life’s suggestions in the future.

Talia was back in Ideal Life’s offices at 8 a.m. It was peaceful at this hour, before everyone else came in. The startup had begun across the hall in a three-room suite; now they took up the entire second, third, and fourth floors of the building.

There were a handful of executive offices and conference rooms with doors, but everything else was an open floor plan. Cubicle walls and desks were all on wheels so that the space could be reconfigured as needed. For example, the human resources department mostly worked alone, so they usually kept their cubicles as individual spaces. But the programmers often collaborated, so they could roll away some of their walls and move their desks next to each other, creating a wall of screens so they could look at code or brainstorm together. Talia loved the flexibility of Ideal Life’s offices; it made space—both literal and figurative—for new ideas to bloom.

As she walked into her own office, she double-checked that her navy blazer was hanging on the back of the door as a way to visually verify that she was still in the right day.

Indeed, it was there, waiting for her to change into it later for the party downstairs at Sugiyama.